There is a branch of holography known as recognition holography to those skilled in the art. Recognition holography is a technique where physical objects are holographically recorded as a reference archetype for subsequent comparisons to secondary objects having varying degrees of similarity with the original. Here, the hologram ultimately serves as a discriminator—a recognizer—that helps detect this degree of similarity. The process requires that the secondary objects to be compared with the primary original are placed in proximate physical position where the original object existed with respect to the holographic recording medium at the time of recording. The comparison object is then illuminated with the same reference beam or one with nearly identical properties such as wavelength and physical positioning as the original one. These rays interact with the secondary object and subsequently interact also with the hologram. If the secondary object is similar to the primary, its complex wavefront will also be similar and the hologram will filter these rays accordingly in proportion to that degree of similarity. A lens is sometimes also used to concentrate the diffracted rays filtered by the hologram into a focal point where they may be practically measured by a transducer such as a photosensor. The lens can also be included in the original recording setup which can eliminate the need to include one later as the hologram reproduces the effects of the original wavefront which included the lens. The photosensor can be connected to additional circuitry, which monitors the recognition process electronically and/or automatically.
The general field of Holography dates to back to 1947 when British physicist Dr. Dennis Gabor first coined the term “hologram”, which literally translated means the whole picture. The core concept and phenomenon behind a hologram's namesake is due to its unique property whereby the entire whole of an object's visual presence image is captured in every single recording pixel of the hologram, itself, sometimes referred to as an interference pattern or holographic recording. Though it requires a certain number of such pixels to be able to reconstruct a holistic image of the object to a suitable level of clarity, the scientifically fascinating point of this holistic property is that a hologram can be greatly damaged or destroyed, and yet the entire image will reconstruct in real and virtual space when re-illuminated by the proper radiation source. When we say the “illuminated” we do not merely refer to visible light as the radiation source, as a hologram can be constructed using any type of electromagnetic or other physical vibrations, including sound waves. However, the essential requirement for recording a hologram is that the source of radiation used is coherent; that is, it contains rays that are synchronized phase-wise in lock step fashion to each other.
While there are slight variations in holographic recording techniques using coherent radiation sources other than visible light or ultra-violet or infra-red lasers, the conventional recording process for making a hologram is generally carried out in most cases as follows:
The source rays are split into two beams usually by means of a beam splitter and subsequently are expanded by lenses, generally. One of these beams—the object beam—is the portion of the source, which bombards the object. These bombarding rays interact with the object such that they are either reflected or transmitted by it toward a recording medium—usually a high-resolution plate or film—which captures them. Simultaneously, the second beam—the reference beam—is directed in an unadulterated fashion toward the recording medium itself. These two beams, also known as wavefronts, interact with each other so as to generate microscopic interference fringes upon the surface or within the entire volume of the recording medium material. These fringes are sometimes referred to as Fraunhoffer lines, Newton's Rings and/or Moire patterns, amongst others names. In laymen's terms they appear as complex patterns which look like “ripples on a pond.” More accurately they are complex superpositions of Fresnel patterns, and take on the similar pattern of the classic Fresnel lenses seen in the classic lighthouses towers of yesteryear. Although the principle of bending rays by the underlying mathematics of the hologram and the Fresnel lens is basically the same concept in both cases, the hologram performs the bending by means of diffraction and the lighthouse does it by means of refraction. When the recording material is processed it is re-illuminated with the reference beam, the fringe patterns interact with the radiation so as to reconstitute the complex wavefront that existed at the time of the recording.
Thus, even though the original object has been removed—usually—from the recording environment, it's virtual presence is reconstructed back: into physical space where it may be viewed.
The experience of viewing a true hologram generated by this process is not fairly comparable to the highly limited experience associated with traditional stereographic processes—also known as “3D” and sometimes hyped as a misnomer to be holograms. Instead, it is more akin to looking through a window into a world where the object seems to be actually there. That the object is actually there is also not very far from the truth for the very reason that a genuine hologram focuses rays to generate a real image in actual space as well as a virtual image.
Since 1967, experiments in computer generated holography (CGH), also known as digital holography have been carried out. The technique involves making holograms by pure mathematical calculation using computers rather than by the interaction of physical rays. These artificially generated holograms are subsequently printed or reduced photographically onto high-resolution film, plates or other recording material so that they can be viewed and experienced like conventional holograms made by more physical recording apparatus.
Both conventional holography and CGH, or digital holography, normally rely on the use of virtual coherent beams of monochromatic radiation. Occasionally, fun color holograms are made where Red, Green and Blue lasers are used either sequentially or simultaneously.
The automation and robotics industries, which are practical applied branches of the scientific artificial intelligence (A.I.) community, altogether suffer from a deplorable lack of versatility when it comes to the growing needs of industry to be able to faithfully recognize complex, sensory based information, which include audio and visual based patterns amongst others. Moreover, in situations where said complex patterns need to be analyzed quickly and reliably “on the fly,” the state of the art research and design process has historically been one which hypes functional expectations of versatility at the outset, and yet because of the unrealized complexity involved in combining the typically requisite smorgasbord of convoluted approaches involved, finally reduces itself towards the development of systems which, to the contrary, eliminate the range of complexity and sophistication of patterns to be recognized from the application. The modern trend is the reductionist approach: to pick the most simple and reliable way to get the job done even if this involves convoluted shortcuts that lack for versatility.
Within this negative trend of shortcut-type approaches, the marketplace introduced a recent plethora of devices each of which is dependent upon bombarding a person with infrared radiation—shining it directly into their eyes no less. Patterns in the illumination are photographed and subsequently analyzed to produce three dimensional information about the subject or subjects. Other companies also are currently producing shortcut-approach devices similar to Kinect, aimed at gesture recognition using similar ray-projection technology. Such systems are altogether doomed to fail absolutely in anything but clean and tight living room or laboratory-style environments. Moreover, such devices do not work in direct sunlight.
Some shortcut approaches in this field also take into reductionist or isolationist account the oversimplified concept of a foreground and/or a background. To those skilled in this art, the terms foreground and background are objectively non-entangled elements that can ultimately be separated perfectly into entities distinct from one other. The reality is that the two concepts are completely subjective and narrowing to true progress in the field. It should be a foregone conclusion that foregrounds and backgrounds are not objectively capturable within the small components'the pixels—but are purely subjective and relativistic terms. Many have tried to differentiate foregrounds from backgrounds. In the prior art, such uses of differentiation yield limited results based only on a narrowly applied what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) type pixel-for-pixel basis. Such instances include inventions involving traveling matte photography, and also the differential analysis of audio or video by comparing pixels or sound bits acquired most artificially and superficially as two separate instances of acquisition to provide the separation: first an element combined with a background, and secondly the actual background itself.
Rather, the general modern understanding of the underlying processes of biological visual and hearing systems would have it that foregrounds, backgrounds and all other objects of distinguishment are elements purely subjective/subjectively important to the observer.
While in recent years it has become more understood to the more disciplined of the scientific minds within this particular community of discourse that to get to the level of reality that enables a system to be able to distinguish real world higher dimensional objects from one another given mere one-dimensional sound bits or two-dimensional arrays of pixels—to perform the process by artificial computational means—one must have some type of better effective model that actually mimics a biological brain and creates the internal reality of it. However, to date no one has provided an adequate model that explains the complex functions of the central and peripheral nervous systems with any absolutely reliable degree of accuracy or confidence in generating an artificial analog to these that actually works with any high order degree of real-world complexity beyond the laboratory style environments. There have been isolated theories by biologists and physicists that the human mind operates in some manner like a hologram, or is holographic, per se. There are also isolated theories by metaphysicists, which run effectively parallel to this thinking that the biological brain somehow works using vibrational interpretation. Nevertheless, the suitable analog or analogs for practical artificially applied usage have proven to be highly elusive.
Thus, there exists a need for a useful model of a wide range of recognition applications within real world or virtual world environments and scenarios.